This site started as a forum for members of the Vietnamese Diaspora to come in and chat, with people from several countries and continents, but mainly the US. It's a very small site but we have cool features and members with diverse views and life experiences and varied interests. We discuss almost everything under the sun and moon (a quick look at the subforums titles alone will tell you that).

Though started as a Vietnamese site, gradually, mostly by word of mouth, we started getting non-Vietnamese members, mostly with a link to Vietnam (they lived there, are married to one of us, are interested in the country per se), but also some with no link at all to VN but common interests or friendships with our members.

Lately, I (FleurduJardin on CoS) have been "recruiting" from CoS, first a member whose username I recognized as Vietnamese, then other people with common interests - for example I contacted Minisinoo because of our mutual fascination with Cedric Diggory. Min has written some absolutely awesome parallel canon fan fics about him (in an alternate universe where he didn't get killed in the graveyard). Both "Kitty" (who, ironically enough, has a Vietnamese username on CoS and an English one here) and Minisinoo are interested in writing, and so am I - it's mostly for them and for myself I created the Writers' Forum.

Then other Harry Potter fans followed. They mostly stay in the Writers' and the Entertainment subforums, but with "incursions" in L'Avenue or Politix, or some other subforum when they have something to say about the subject under discussion.

Unlike CoS, we are an adult forum. By which I don't mean X-rated, I mean our youngest member (before Griffiegrrl joined) was in her late twenties. (I think Griffie is in her mid- to late-teens.) My point being, we are not as strict about "family-friendlystuff only". We can discuss mature subjects without an Auror swooping down on us and editing our posts, or scolding us when we put one toe off-topic.

Like CoS, we don't go for profanities (there's an automatic word censor for most English swear words) and try to keep heated arguments within bounds. However, our limits are broader than CoS's. We do edit out really serious insults and vulgarities that escaped the automatic censor, but we haven't banned anyone yet, except some spammers, and in a few cases by mistake.

People who get overboard in a debate on a touchy subject get shunted to the War Room to slug it out between themselves there. In extreme cases, the really intolerable stuff gets committed to "the Void", which can only be seen by Admins and Mods. The only things we've deleted outright are really offensive pornographic stuff.

There you have it, in a (big) nutshell. Hope lots of you who visited lately will decide to join. Especially the people interested in writing (not necessarily about Harry) and have posted such awesome entries in the Triwizard Tournament's Second Task!

See you soon! _________________She Who Must Be Obeyed - because - Fire cannot kill a Dragon.